The Spark

by David Drake

  Baga nodded. “A smart lady,” he said. “Very bloody smart.”

  He looked back in the direction in which his wife had disappeared, then said brightly, “Say, did you hear what happened last night?”

  “No,” I said. I’d gotten a certain amount of palace gossip when Welsh and Garrett were in Dun Add, but nothing since then. Which was fine with me, believe me.

  “You know Gismonde, one of the Champions?” Baga said.

  I shrugged. “Go on,” I said. I didn’t know Gismonde, but I’d met him.

  “Well, he drank a bottle of poisoned wine and died!” Baga said. “And his buddy Baran says that it was the Consort, Jolene herself, who did it! Can you believe that?”

  “No,” I said. “Frankly I can’t. But fortunately it’s none of my business. Let’s get going shall we?”

  I walked to the hatch. Earlier this morning I would have said that I couldn’t be more ready to get out of Dun Add.

  I’d been wrong. I was even more anxious now to leave.

  CHAPTER 27

  Farandol

  I watched in a trance as Baga brought the boat in smoothly. Nobody was at Farandol’s landingplace, but I could see a stone structure with sheer walls within a hundred yards. Beyond that were fields with a few workers. They wore floppy hats.

  I returned to Here and got up. Baga walked to the hatch and waited with his hand on the lever. Boyes stood beside his compartment; he nodded when he met my eyes. He was wearing leather gloves, which I didn’t recall him doing before.

  “All right, boss?” Baga said.

  “Sure, open it up,” I said, checking that my shield and weapon were in place in the pockets of my red suit. I heard Boyes walking up the corridor behind me.

  Baga threw the lever, using his whole body. Something wet and pungent brushed the left side of my neck, stinging briefly. I saw myself falling forward, but I didn’t feel anything, even when I hit the floor.

  Boyes walked past me. He had a small pail in one hand and a wet cloth in the other.

  Baga turned. His mouth opened when he saw me; I suppose he said something. He bent forward, reaching for me. Boyes patted him on the neck with the cloth also.

  My consciousness slowly shrank down to a point of white light. Then that blanked out also.

  * * *

  I woke up—I won’t say “became alert” because I wasn’t. I was held to a stone wall by flat iron straps which were hinged at one end and locked to a bolt on the other. One gripped either wrist, and there was a larger band clamping my waist. I was seated and my legs, splayed out in front of me, weren’t held.

  My neck stung. A tall man was looking down at me. Boyes was beside him, holding a cloth and pail. The smell was different from what I’d noticed in the boat when Boyes knocked me out; this time it was sickly sweet.

  My guts suddenly flipped over. I barely turned my head to the side before I spewed my breakfast onto the stone floor.

  The tall man grinned. Boyes’s expression didn’t change. He put the wet cloth into the metal pail and closed a lid over it.

  My vomit hadn’t changed the condition of the room, the cell, very much. I thought of Palin’s body, shackled to a similar wall by the Spider, and wondered whether that was what Boyes or his master had in mind for me.

  “I’m Lang,” the tall man said. His voice sounded thin but the tone was pleasant enough. He took a flat, circular box from his tunic pocket; it looked something like the container Mom had used to hold buttons. “This is the device I use to control Boyes.”

  Lang took a similar box from the opposite pocket. “This is the one that will control you,” he said, grinning again. “I decided that I need an agent in Jon’s court. That you’ve come with your own boat is an unexpected bonus.”

  “I can’t run the boat myself,” I said. I’d decided that I might as well speak to Lang. I didn’t see how speaking could make my situation worse than it was already.

  “Your man is in another cell,” Lang said. “In good time I’ll see if I need to fit him with a controller as well. I rather think not. I’ve found plenty of soldiers simply by paying them or—”

  The smile widened.

  “—letting them do as they please, so long as they also do what I direct them to do. That’s better than money with many humans.”

  I didn’t respond to that. By shifting my butt slightly—all I could shift it with the band around my waist—I could tell that my weapon and shield were still in their pockets. If I could get a hand free…

  I grinned. That wasn’t what Lang was expecting. He stepped forward and slapped me, his face twisting with fury.

  “Do you think I’m joking!” he screamed. “You’ll see how much a joke it is when I’ve keyed the controller to your brain! It’s from Not-Here, did you know that?”

  The slap didn’t hurt as much as it should have. I wondered if the drug that knocked me out and the second drug that brought me around again had between them left me numb. As well as being sick to my stomach.

  “I don’t know anything about it,” I said. “I’ve never heard of a mind controller before. Are you a Maker?”

  What I did know was that while it was possible to work with artifacts from Not-Here, no Maker I knew could fit a Not-Here device to affect a human mind. That was like asking a blind man to paint a picture.

  I thought again about the weapon in my pocket. I avoided smiling.

  “I’m not a Maker,” Lang said, grinning again, “but a Maker does my bidding. I’ll leave you alone with it.”

  He and Boyes turned and went out.

  A moment later, holding one of the disks Lang had called a controller, a Beast entered the cell. He closed the door behind him.

  * * *

  I’d been equally close to a Beast when I’d killed the Shade on the Road. I’d immediately backed away then, because I expected the Beast to attack me as soon as I’d freed it. I hadn’t really gotten a good view.

  I had leisure to observe this one, however. The light was bad, but it was good enough for me to tell that the slippery, uncertain, look of the Beast’s body was because I wasn’t really seeing the surface. The Beast wasn’t completely Here.

  I suppose it was watching me also, though it didn’t have eyes that I could see. A voice in my mind said, “Do not get your hopes up, human. I have many times synchronized this controller with the mind of a human. Your mind will be no different from the others.”

  “That’s not what I wanted to hear,” I said. I spoke aloud because that seemed more natural to me. “Still, I learned when I was a kid that it didn’t do any good to argue with reality.”

  I looked at the palm-sized box gripped by the Beast’s blackness. I couldn’t say “fingers” because the contact flowed and changed like water sloshing onto the ground. I wondered if I could get beyond the controller’s range in the boat. I could try, at least.

  “Distance will make no difference to the controller,” the Beast said. “It operates in a different reality from either Here or Not-Here.”

  I was surprised at the Beast telling me that. On second thought, I wondered if I could believe him. Believe it.

  The Beast didn’t laugh—could you laugh in your mind?—but it said, “I am not Lang’s ally, human. I am Lang’s slave, for as long as he has my ancestor in thrall in a place I cannot go to free him.”

  “I was surprised to see a—” I said. “I mean, to see you working for a human.”

  “‘Beast’ does not offend me, human,” the Beast said. “Nothing a mere human could do would offend me. But in any case, Lang is no more human than I am. Lang is a thing of the Waste.”

  “But he looks—” I said, then remembered the Shade had looked like a beautiful woman until the instant I killed it.

  “You rescued one of my kin on the Road,” the Beast said. “Why was it that you did that?”

  I laughed. I couldn’t have lied, and I probably wouldn’t have anyway.

  “It was really an accident,” I said. “I killed the Shade and t
hat turned the Beast loose. To tell the truth, I expected the Beast to attack me, then. Since I’d made my weapon useless for five minutes or so, I wasn’t looking forward to that.”

  I thought of laughter again, though of course I heard nothing. The Beast said, “You could have passed on and done nothing. The Shade would not have been a danger for weeks after it had fed.”

  I made a face. “Yeah, I know,” I said. “But Shades are enemies to life—all life. I wasn’t going to walk away from it. I figured I’d take my chances with the Beast. And it worked out. Remember, I’d wanted to be a Champion.”

  Which I now was, amazingly. Though that wasn’t doing me any good.

  “My kin was young,” the Beast said. “And he was badly injured. He would certainly have attacked you had he been able to.”

  “I was lucky,” I said. “I guess we were both lucky.”

  “Yes,” the Beast said. “I suppose you were.”

  It turned and touched the door pull.

  “Aren’t you going to tune that thing?” I said. The creature was still holding the controller.

  “I have done so,” the Beast said. It paused but did not turn. “I expect that Lang will set it so that you will do his bidding and will not act to harm him, because that is what he did with other humans whom he controls. But that is for him, not me.”

  Then the Beast left the room. I was alone for a moment with my thoughts.

  They weren’t good company.

  * * *

  The only light in the cell came from a window behind me, which meant through a narrow slot in the outer wall. It didn’t help me estimate time, but it can’t have been but a few minutes before the door rattled again and two guys came in. One was missing two fingers of his left hand; the other had a scar up his right cheek that ended in the empty eye-socket.

  A third guy, this one with weapon and shield, stood in the doorway, and there were more people in the hallway beyond. I could chop them all to dog scraps if I got my weapon in my hand.…

  One-Eye held my right wrist while his partner unlocked the pin holding the clamp. To my surprise, both men stepped away. I lowered my arm and shook blood back into it. Then I lowered my hand into my pocket and brought out my weapon.

  “I’ll take that,” said One-Eye. I gave him the weapon, which he took to the armed man at the door. He might be the only one of the three in the cell with me who was capable of using it.

  The man with the key unlocked my left wrist and himself dipped the shield out of that pocket. He unlocked my waist band also while One-Eye took the shield to the fellow at the door.

  I got up slowly, bracing myself against the wall I’d been strapped to. The shackles had galled the bones of both wrists and my hipbones. Nothing serious, though, and the wobbliness I felt was likely the last of the drug wearing off rather than any real problem.

  I couldn’t understand why I’d let the thugs take my weapon and shield. It was like a wall of frozen slush had slid over my mind when One-Eye reached for the weapon. Instead of cutting him apart, I’d just opened my hand.

  “This way,” said the armed man, nodding toward the door. He’d put my equipment into the satchel he carried on a shoulder strap. I walked into the hall and followed the half-dozen men there toward the room at the end. None of them were equipped as warriors, but they all carried clubs or big knives. The warrior with weapon and shield was behind me.

  We came out into a chamber with a domed roof and a chair up three steps in a corner where Lang sat. Boyes and a woman who shared some features as him were on the chairs to either side on the broad bottom step. I remembered that his complaint to Jon had been that his sister Liufa and her husband Lang had dispossessed him. That had been mostly a lie, but the woman might well be Boyes’s sister.

  She looked terrified. She must not be controlled the way her brother was. I’d never seen Boyes show any emotion.

  With the group who’d accompanied me from the cell, there were about thirty thugs in the chamber. Two or three were women. Only one other man and the guy from my cell were warriors. All were ugly, and at least half were missing body parts or had bad scars.

  “Well, Pal…” Lang said. I didn’t see the controller, but his hands resting on the flat arms of his chair held a weapon and shield. “Lord Pal. Are you ready to carry out your first mission as the Champion of Farandol?”

  For a moment I said nothing—mostly to see if I had to speak. Apparently I didn’t, so I said, “What do you want me to do, Lang?”

  My tone didn’t make his grin slip. I remembered the Beast saying Lang was a thing of the Waste. It seemed hard to believe.

  “There’s another enclave not far away,” Lang said. “A nest of robbers. Rowley’s Roost, they call it. The leader styles himself Lord Charles. They raid not only among the enclaves but into Here as well.”

  “How do they manage that?” I said. So far as I could tell, I was completely myself, the same guy who’d boarded my boat in Dun Add—except that I wasn’t carrying my shield and weapon now.

  “They travel in a large band,” Lang said, “just as I did when I sent Boyes to Dun Add to fetch you.”

  Boyes sat in his chair like a dummy. He didn’t move at the sound of his name.

  “Lord Charles is a warrior,” Lang said. “He has two or three others. Mostly they’re just filthy cut-throats.”

  “Like your own gang,” I said.

  I heard growls from the gang, but Lang just grinned again. “Exactly,” he said. “I want you to wipe out the nest of ruffians, Champion. You see, you’re doing what you went to Dun Add to do.”

  “To do that,” I said, “I’ll need my equipment. Are you going to give it back?”

  “Of course,” said Lang. “Jacques, return our Champion’s arms to him.”

  The thug with missing fingers reached into his companion’s satchel. With my weapon and shield, he approached me.

  I took them from his hands and looked around the chamber. It was long odds, but not really too long.…

  The frozen feeling slid back over my mind.

  Lang’s loud laughter rang in the chamber. Everyone joined him except for me and Boyes; and I suppose Liufa.

  CHAPTER 28

  The Duties of a Champion

  Lang permitted me to sleep—and to eat, which was a particular mercy—aboard the boat. Baga remained in a cell. I regretted that, but just now I had as much as I could do to take care of myself.

  The standard fare on Farandol’s tables was meat stew. I didn’t trust what the meat was. I suppose it didn’t matter, but I’d still rather eat the boat’s processed meals.

  Buck and I were ready to leave at dawn, as Lang had ordered. I didn’t need the controller to get me up, but it was nearer midmorning than dawn before the rest of the gang was gathered. They were even less impressive in good light than they had been in the throne room.

  The Army of Farandol, under my command. I could only hope that Lord Charles didn’t attract a better grade of soldier. That seemed likely enough, because my guide—Jacques, the thug who with One-Eye had freed me in the cell—had been one of Lord Charles’s gang.

  “Benlo said I was cheating at cards,” Jacques said as we tramped along the Road with the rest of the band straggling along behind us. “I slotted him before he could get his own knife out, but I took off before Charles learned what’d happened to his bum-boy. And I took all three dogs off with me so the gang couldn’t make any time on the Road if they followed.”

  “That was quick thinking,” I said. I had to depend on the man, and I’ve learned there’s usually something good you can say if you put your mind to it.

  “Scared me sober, it did,” said Jacques, nodding solemnly.

  “How many guards are there at the castle gate in daytime?” I said.

  “Dunno,” said Jacques. “One, I guess. I never had the duty myself.”

  “There’s one at Farandol,” One-Eye—that turned out to be the name everybody called him by—said. “Old Seltsy, and you’ve got to wake
him up.”

  “And the gate is closed by night, like it is here?” I said. “Back in Farandol, I mean?”

  “Sure, closed and barred,” Jacques agreed. “And I guess there’s three or four guys in the guard room overhead. They can drop the portcullis, too.”

  “Say, how you going to get us into the castle, hey?” One-Eye said. “You going to cut through the stone? I gotta say that your weapon didn’t look like much.”

  I kept my temper, but it was a strain to do that. This bloody moron was criticizing as neat a piece of hardware as I’d seen even in the Hall of Champions!

  But he was a moron, of course. I didn’t need to defend my gear to him or to anybody else.

  “I suppose I could if I had to,” I said. “And there was nobody else around. What I figure to do, though, is to saunter up to the gate and block it until the rest of you lot come up. Jacques, you wait at the edge of landingplace. Everybody else stays on the Road where they won’t be seen. When I’ve blocked the gate, you fetch the army.”

  I was wearing ordinary farm gear—floppy hat, brown trousers, and tunic with a belt of rye-straw rope. I didn’t figure anybody was going to look twice at me.

  “Look, Lord Charles is gonna to come at you before we get up there,” Jacques said. “He’s a warrior and he’s got warriors, two when I was there but he was trying to hire a third one.”

  “He’s got a woman, Jacques told me,” said One-Eye. “Have you ever heard of that? Don’t seem natural to me.”

  “It’s not common,” I said, “but it’s natural enough. The Ancients built weapons for men only, but nothing you can point to that doesn’t have some exceptions.”

  There were women boatmen and women Makers, though not as many as men, and there were even a few warriors. I’d been surprised when the clerk at the Aspirants’ Hall had switched on my gear, but I’d seen it happen.

  “Not natural,” One-Eye repeated, though he didn’t look at me. Well, he’d been a moron when he insulted my weapon. I couldn’t expect him to suddenly get smarter.

  “There’s a branch just ahead of us,” I said.